


Higher Elevations

by JoAsakura, PrettyArbitrary



Series: Catdads [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Introspection, M/M, On the Run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 18:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8633701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary
Summary: Jack is a mountain cat.  Enclosed spaces always made him twitchy. Vantage soothes him; he likes to see what's coming and react.  Catdads on the run after Zurich, taking a moment to breathe.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Co-author credit to joasakura, for literally writing the second half of this when I couldn't figure out how to finish it. Also because she's basically the one to blame for all things catdads (especially the fact that it's an actual AU now), and because this was her prompt. She's pretty much solely responsible for this, honestly. I just happened to be standing here.

Jack is a mountain cat. Enclosed spaces always made him twitchy, even before Zurich. Vantage soothes him; he likes having options, the ability to see what's coming and react. 

He's crouched comfortably on the broad cement parapet of a brutalist abomination of a skyscraper, staring out without much thought over the lights of Sao Paulo, when his superhuman hearing picks up the softest stir of gravel on the roof behind him. One of his ears twitches toward the sound. He doesn’t bother looking because he already knows who it is.

“I thought I'd find you up here,” Gabriel says. “Bad move, Jack. If I can figure out where you’ve gone, then so can they.”

Jack grunts in acknowledgement. When Gabriel sits down next to him, he laces their fingers together. Gabe’s wearing those silver claw-tipped gloves. They scream Gothy McEdgelord, but they’re a damn sight less noticeable than Gabriel’s actual claws. He has a hard time retracting them, these days. Jack’s pretty sure it’s psychosomatic, considering they’ve spent the last few years either running or fighting for their lives. Then again, if it isn’t psychosomatic, it's not like they have anybody they can ask about it.

Gabriel doesn’t say anything else, but Jack can feel him waiting. Not pushing Jack to talk, but listening if he’s got anything he wants to air.

Jack lets the city smells wash over him for a while: ozone and car exhaust, roofing tar, the damp snap of impending rain in the wind. Rancid vegetable oil, cigarette smoke and seasoned chicken from the gyro vendor on the street corner 150 feet below them. Human sweat laced with impatience, frustration, exhaustion, small fears and simple pleasures; safe herd emotions, nothing on the hunt or aimed at them. Gabriel, who smells like cumin, stale coffee and home. “I couldn’t stand it down there anymore,” he says at last. “It's like being at the bottom of a pit.” 

Man-made canyon walls, everywhere he looks, halfway to falling in on him if he makes the mistake of looking up. Buried alive. Cement dust, his own blood and human ash a thick pudding in his throat like he'd been drinking mud. Wondering if that was Gabriel he was breathing in. Threatening heat inching constantly closer as he'd clawed at the rubble till his hands were peeled raw, trying to dig himself out. He shudders and wraps his tail around himself.

“...Yeah.” In that one word, he can hear Gabriel following him down the rabbit hole into his own memories of fire and blood from that day. Gabriel edges closer till they’re touching at thigh and shoulder, and loops his tail around Jack’s waist too. He's warm in the cold wind that’s always blowing at this height. 

The weight of Gabriel's tail around him feels more like an anchor than a hug. For both of them, maybe. Jack takes another breath, one that tastes like a city at elevation instead of a memory of a tomb, and sags against Gabriel’s heavier frame.

"Yeah," Gabriel says again, trying to make something comforting out of it. He sighs, landing on, "I know you're tired, Ounce," and Jack knows he's talking about them both. 

It’s a silly joke from a long-lost teammate that mostly feels weary now. Jaguar _Panthera onca_ and snow leopard _Panthera uncia_ , and through the power of weird heraldry-speak and language drift, she said, they both became Ounce. She used to call them that like they came as a set, and she wasn’t wrong, always together and two of a kind in an ‘opposite sides of the coin’ way: Gabriel, gleaming black on shadow, stalking in the darkness, and Jack's bright-flashing death from above. "But we can't stay here," Gabriel adds softly, raking those ridiculous silver-tipped gloves through Jack's white-gold hair.

Jack chuffs a soft laugh, caught off guard by the old name. "Just another moment," he says for them both. "Just another minute so we can breathe."


End file.
